Human Rights Lawyer Detained In Iran

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr has been detained.

Amnesty International said arrests in Iran of civil society activists like Shadi Sadr appear to be intensifying.

"This was an illegal, arbitrary and violent arrest in which no attempt was made by the authorities to show identification or provide any explanation for their action," said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.

Licenses of Beijing Human Rights Lawyers Threatened

According to Human Rights Watch and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Beijing legal authorities are threatening to deny renewal of the legal licenses of some of the city’s high profile civil-rights lawyers.

“It is unprecedented to have so many prominent lawyers facing difficulties with their license renewal,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is a sort of backhand retaliation by judicial authorities in Beijing to warn the firms that employ these lawyers that there might be consequences to their business if they don’t keep their distance.”

The authorities in rural China have frequently sought to silence or intimidate activist lawyers by holding up the annual renewal of their licenses to practice law. But in Beijing, the renewal process, which involves filling out a form and paying a fee, has generally been trouble-free until now.

Zimbabwe Jails Human Rights Activists

18 human rights campaigners were re-imprisoned.

Zimbabwe human rights campaigner Jestina Mukoko has been ordered back to jail for plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe, her lawyer said.

Ms Mukoko is among 18 leading activists to be detained just two months after they were released on bail.

The activists say they were tortured into making false confessions.

China Releases “The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010)”

China's New UN Plan Won't Delude Its Human Rights Lawyers:

On the same day that Mr. Cheng [an attorney who defended a Falun Gong adherent] was beaten by public officials, China released “The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010).” The document is an attempt to respond to criticism by the world human rights community and to show that China's communist leaders are now serious about taking action to improve human and civil rights.

Beating up attorneys and jailing them is not unusual police conduct in China. The AsianNews report notes that there has been an increase in intimidation and violence against the brave lawyers who defend human rights.

The plan says nothing about ending the monopoly of one-party rule in China. Instead, it muddles the concept of human and civil rights by speaking of subsistence rights and economic rights in a socialist state run by the Chinese Communist Party. It doesn’t discuss the fundamental freedoms that the civilized world cherishes—freedom of speech, freedom to practice one’s religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, independent courts, equal justice under the law, and so on.